I am downloading the Vista 64-bit service pack 2 right now. I was wondering if anyone has obtained the new release as of yesterday, and if so does this have any positive or negative effects with the newest pcsx2 release and its plugins?

It's been available for some time, there no improvement in performance no drawbacks it's more a set of new features and bugfixes. However if you use the "balanced" power management policy in power options control panel you might feel lower performance contrary to the older power policys.

It's been available to manufacturer's for a while but they just released it to the public yesterday I think. For some reason, they are not putting it in Windows Update for a few weeks, but you can download it from the directly.

Yep, the changes weren't really made to improve graphics performance or processor use. The main features seem to be taking advantage of some better USB functionality, networking improvements, and addressing some issues with media playback.